First Time Blues Affair

An AfroFuturism story by WilliamJJackson

"I want to give birth to a baby, not a starship," Sharqueen announced across an opulent mauve chamber full of expectant mothers. Needless to say, her statement caused no little stir among the rows of patient, waiting women in their long, prismatic gowns and pristine aerogel pendulum earrings. Seeing through her dark matter eyes the restlessness of her peers, the side eye glances, casual passing of judgement 'girl you best hush' tightening along many a jawline, Sharqueen sat back in the curved plush seat and rubbed a minimal bump along her abdomen.

This, her first time beneath the Celestial Light Arkestra with her womb scientifically in bud, she needed this perfect event to produce that one vital seed. 

A human being.

Waiting under the space dome became hearing the obvious in closed quarters.

Sisters gabbing about space travel, the scarcity of aerosilks, holidays gel-gliding between dwarf planets before getting wombed. Others mumbled, eyes cut to scalpels at Sharqueen, praised a woman's duty to discretion.

"Colonization of the Far Off means homes are needed. Bridges. Rovers. I thought everyone knew that."

"Mmm, some people just want to get noticed."

"Tradition died when we made pregnancy a tool, not a demand."

And other such niceties an outcast is likely to hear.

The sound to her ears of, "The doctor will see you now," was music to her dainty ears.

"You do realize what you're asking for is complex," Doctor Anuba stated it with the clarity of visible light shining on the far off Earth everyday. He had a perennial stillness to him, as if the body moved only between eye blinks of those watching him. A cool doctor, never irate, who passed along bad news as if it was a giant animal baaloon in a parade.

"Mm-hmm." Sharqueen thought the quick invitation into this office of Martian bluewood and myrrh incense might lighten the mood in contrast to the waiting room. How wrong her opinion was. "You seem rather opinionated, Doctor. I chose the season to birth. I should get the choice of what comes outta me, even if the what is a who."

"I understand very well, Miss Lamotte. But there is a reason why women liberated themselves from the morass of childbearing three centuries ago. The fit baths along Titan do the work for us. Women get to be free. Pregnancy is a more of a career move, as you know, part of the early summer fashion trends to look healthy in winter. It's easier to input the molecules for a ship, a bridge or an Omega Thought Body, carry it for a few months and then allow quark molders to finish the growth-work than it is to wrestle with the intricate dietary and genetic malformities of a real human inside of you."

He paused for an effect known only to him. "And what would people think?"

"But it is what I want. I took the career path for a Colony Mother, passed all the physical examinations, the damnable exams, took a needleship from Monrovia all the way out here to Centaur-in-the-ice-bloody-dark! For my first birth I want a child, a boy, dark-skinned like me yet not me in that impeccable way Life makes things strange, smiling and full of fat life and wide eyes fit for exploring. I've seen the motherships, fatherships, sonships and even third cousinships pushing out into deep space with their momma's name gene-carved into their hulls. But who flies them, hmm? I want to provide the pilot to one of those kinships. Now, you in, or you out? 'Cuz this wee dwarf world's got six other obstetricians who could say yes, not to mention a few streetwives who buff and cut cells into anything for the right price. But I have my morals to consider."

The doctor went pale. "I wouldn't recommend a 'streetwife' for anything short of converting rock mineral into power fluid. Maybe not even that. Miss Lamotte, I understand your adamancy, I simply want you to be aware of the risks. Biologically maybe forty women have natural birthed a child in the last century. Those women received little social support, faced ostracization and were considered, well, none too self absorbed. You must consider your role in life. Women were once fashion victims, body slaves. Now you are fashion, you lovecraft whole neighborhoods. Nothing of value exists without coming out of a woman. Childbirth is just chaining yourself to an old space station. We build our next generation without worry. And might I add your hump is already primed for a beautiful metropolitan foundation, a rare thing indeed."

Across from Anuba, Miss Lamotte's eyes expanded from fatigued squint to empowered glare in slow motion.

"I'd like a human baby. Male. Now." Her arms crossed over her chest, covering some of the roving crimson/gold/mercury lines in Sharqueen's gel blouse. A split second later, the left hand lowered, reached into her crescent-shaped purse and set a frozen vial of adult male donation, on bank from a long travelling beau, on the desk. Going ancient school required more than the empty chem-cells already frothing in her midsection.

"Michael is the father's name, and he is anxiously waiting for me to call him with a resounding 'it's a boy'."

"Very well," the doctor replied. "Step into the purification shower while I prep a carbon inhibitor and thaw, this...out."

Sharqueen squealed and lightly clapped her hands in front of her face. "Thank you, Doctor! You won't regret this! I'll name him after you! Well, one of his middle names will be yours, anyway! Promise!"

He returned her gratitude with an expression of a man about to handle fresh mucus with his bare hands.

Sharqueen rushed into the shower, stripped down and bathed, letting the mineral rich water pulse into tense skin that had anticipated a negative response. "Come on, activator cells...wake up!"

Two dim days passed as Centaur drifted in the ebon chunk madness known as the Kuiper Belt, lit by arc rings built into its core during the reign of Asman the Dust, who mined out this dark world and terraformed its innards. In this split gravity playland, mangrove trees grew up and down, as far as one might discern, until they fused over and under into bridges, gazebos, pretty purple canopies to sip Titian tea under while the icicles melted up-down.

It was here that Sharqueen Lamotte called Michael.

"Michael, Love, we have the spawn." She rubbed an even tighter, rounder belly as her open prismatic chiffon robe blew in a warm breeze. "I'm doubled up!"

"We're in? A boy? They got you--! Oh, baby, you look so good buff!" His solidified, reimagined face hovered over Sharqueen's burgeoning hump, studying.

"I think so, too. My skin is aglow. Face shiny! Might start feeling myself a little too much. Too bad you're way off in Alpha sucking dark matter. Anyway, the doctor said activator cells were phenoms, with your gift perfecting the split/divide enhancement. This oven is hot."

"Sure we shouldn't have done the whole thing natural?"

"We did, baby. Thirty-six times to no avail. Humans ain't built for it no more. We switched it up too much. Freedom costs."

"Heh, so does choice. Speaking of, I better disconnect. We're slipping into an electromagnetic swirl, so....back......two months? Four?..."

"Michael? Mike? Useless extrasolar relays!" She slapped the tiny fluttering bug that once formed the Michaelhead. It scraped mangrove bark and tumbled into the topsy-turvy netherworld.

Sharqueen caught her man would arrive in a few months. Best to relax. Take it in, this anomaly-by-request, and let it run its course. A boy! A real live, squiggly pre-human rested in her! What would he become? How would he walk, talk, laugh? Would he love yellow or hate pasta? Wait. What if he turned out to be aggressive? Michael wasn't, but still. Egotistical? No fashion sense! Should she have picked a girl or a gynandromorph instead? Tender, happy, frightful imaginings went through her mind, a mind not accustomed to daydreaming or pleasantries.

An occupying force of sisters in designer holostripes surrounded her position, and dissipated all of Sharqueen's positivity.

"You the protoplasm lover?" One demanded to know.

"Excuse me?" Sharqueen clicked two opal encrusted fingernails together.

"Look at her playing dumb," another said.

"Who are you calling dumb? I don't know a single one of you, and none of you sure as Ark don't know me!"

"Who are we, Sister of the Stars?" a third cut in, sat at Sharqueen's table, a blank holomask on and a regal Egyptian Atef crown upon her shaved head, "We are the Statement, keepers of liberated womanhood, passed down generationally since our ancestors left Earth in large numbers. Space travel is a heartless endeavor, young Sister. We women had to shed full term pregnancy, menstruation, shackles of the Literal First World, in order to keep pace with that covenant of men who sought continually to reinstitute patriarchy across every single planet they dropped a settlement on. Our path is the Struggle."

"Yeah, I've heard of you. Your posterganda is spread all over the Venusian clouds and half of Polynesia. I admire you, job well done." She offered them a clap. "Birthing what you like is just as choice as deciding which pair of platforms to wear or picking apples or oranges to eat while on a walk. Agreeing to birth solid state colony masses to show crusty old men on AI support that women still had value? Genius political move. But that's old news now."

"Are you saying the Struggle is pointless?"

"No. I'm telling you to live up to your own hype. If birth is choice, meaning my choice, then I chose this." She pointed to her womb. "You need to respect."

Sharqueen rather enjoyed the amalgamated hisses and whisperings coming out of this haute couture mob with their hoverboard stilettos and rotating bracelets.

"You do realize we control forty percent of Centaur?"

"Yeah, but you control zero percent of me and my baby. Now, thank you for all you've done, sod off and let me enjoy my now frigid tea."

Side eyed glances cast residual daggers of resentment as the Statement drifted off for parts unknown. Sharqueen felt a chill in the air, more than that from the dripping icicles. Had she truly ruffled feathers? Was a single bio-birth a weapon, a pistol aimed at the collective face of the powerful Womanhood elite?

Had the sex become so far removed, emotionally, from the concept of maternal instinct as to loathe its existence?

Maternal love. Sharqueen felt that instinct, as sure as she felt toes wiggling in sand on a Liberian beach as a little girl. It was tangible from before puberty, the urge to protect a baby, any baby. She kept kids smaller than her safe on the beach, in the regenerative streets of Monrovia, and as a teacher of social science at Chilicothe Uni on Olympus Mons City. Despite her casual, assured demeanor handed down from generations of mothers who knew how to remain cool under pressure, Sharqueen often worried about any youth under her care, even long after they moved on.

So the Statement making threats? Big deal. Everyone knows the universe runs cold. She shook it off.

For the time being.

Modernity made pregnancy of anything, even a human, a sculpted quick work, half the time and frustration of the old days. Labor pains, not knowing when the event would hit or water might break, were tales of myth, stories to frighten rude little girls. Sharqueen's boy had a medically induced birthdate set for four months, three days, eleven hours.

Radical biocells implanted into Sharqueen before she ever reached Centaur held everything, a transformative chemical bath, a budding, whatever, might need. Carrying a future highrise office complex? Cells made concrete, specific to the world it would grow on, lined molecules up for transparent windows, hollow spaces for ventilation, Edges formed after birth, to keep the mother from suffering internal bleeding or organ damage. After four months plus some, a well-shaped thing like an artistic cyst would be removed, transported, then rested in a larger chembath to build it up to scale. This paved the way for deep space travel. Massive ships for construction equipment and giant matter printers were unnecessary. A needleship could take a few dozen persons, and an entire miniature city with shuttles resting in bubbling kiddie pools to a new world and scale things up to habitability.

Every gender in the species planned these molds. You could throw a stone on any inhabited Ark and hit a structure born from a woman. The Sixty-Fifth Exploratory Group, bound for Hobus, were all birthed starships. Their pilots? The very mothers who carried them, including the attached AI units, and shuttles. And solid states fly better and lasted much longer. Women weren't just the backbone of society, but the DNA.

Four months. Three days. Two hours.

Three months. Eighteen days. Six hours.

Sharqueen became restless. Radiant skin paled to a crying lumbar spine and swollen ankles. Apparently not all the ills of ancient times could be swept under the cosmic rug. Communication silence made her dwell on Michael's sturdy, smooth face during sleepless nights. Women birthing solids could get a pain shot or meditative stimjolt if they really needed it. But when you carry a life in you, medication remained off limits.

Sharqueen spent weeks in growing worry. Was it hormones making her instincts go counterclockwise? Baby learned to kick, she thought it was a rebellion, a sign she should have gone with something easier like subterranean tunnel tubes or space station furniture. This Boy might knock one of her organs out of alignment.

Two months. Nine days. One hour.

Centaur spun-moved through Kuiper like a bumblebee, fat, wobbly, in a creeping slow motion one could feel on still evenings when the Arklight dimmed and the magnetic oars powered down. On these particular nights, swollen, wrists aching, neck pinched, migraine induced, Sharqueen would sit up, supported by a half dozen pillows sent from a confused and judgemental family back home, and cry. She studied the hormonal aspects of pregnancy. But its reality took her for a ride. Misery with happiness. Loneliness cradling a joy at feeling this new life within her, that bond, that unbreakable DNA helix between mother and child.

But then, between the loathing, the despair...these waves of bio-spiritual intertwining between woman and child pulsated. She felt the Boy. He felt her, deeper than anyone on the outside ever would, stronger than gravity. A push-pull that let her know there was much more to the universe than average perception grasped.

Who would give this up, this most precious horror?

When sleep did settle in, it brought with it the recurring dreadmare. Michael dead, his ship exploded against a rogue planet called Sharqueen Twelve who cried out in birthing pains to push out his corpse. That corpse, resurrected by a hand made from a million gilded stars, reduced Michael's husk to a surreal Nok figurine as Sharqueen, falling, was pulled out of the dead womb of Mama Statement, who denied she was the mother and ended spacetime with a defiant, grainy laughter.

Awaken!

Baby turned over, sleeping pretty. The womb squirmed. Sharqueen rubbed his housing, her figure, murmured sweet praises, and wiped cold sweat from a wrinkled brow.

This used to last nine months. How did they do it? Michael, you better be alive and on your way here!

One month. Two days. Fifteen hours. Twenty-eight minutes. Forty seconds...

"Hey," Michael was over her as she lay in bed. Of course the Brother shows on the one night Baby and the universe let her sleep good. "How's my woman and—?' He kissed her head before gazing at her belly in amazement. "This is us?" A large hand used to hard labor gently caressed her body.

"This"—she strained to sit up—"is me and him. You just got in. When you take some of this ankle weight on yourself, then it becomes 'us'."

"Don't know how to do that, but, let me get a shower and a stretch, then I'm taking care of you and the little guy." He pecked her brow and jogged off.

Minutes later, Michael cracked every bone in his body, then treated Sharqueen to a massage, bubblebath, fed her sliced mango, dates and cherries. He whispered the story of Oyot and why bats only fly by night, the tale of the Struggle over multiple continents, humanity's journey into the cosmos.

He spent three days telling Sharqueen how beautiful she was, how he loved the way light danced across her powerful skin and she was the bravest soul he had ever known. He told her of Majestrix-Nine, where long land mollusks were found, the first alien macrolife encountered. He revealed pictures of them, segmented bluish worms oozing up from thousands of clay holes. Sharqueen was as repulsed as she was excited.

She wondered what the Baby would encounter in his adulthood. What newness awaited him out there, hiding behind buildings valiant mothers sent out into the void?

Michael rejuvenated her, crutch and able hands that he was during that diamond of a week. Then, as those who ply the spacelanes do, he received the next shipping assignment, and returned to being a spectre in his woman's life. Shippers did not get time off. The call was all. He kissed Sharqueen sweetly, kissed the belly.

"By the time I get back, you'll be out here, Little Man! Daddy will be back to hold you, okay? I love you. I love you both."

He departed at the port. Sharqueen waved him off as the Statement stood a ways off, judging her and him who set the species back centuries. Sharqueen noticed they had returned to old ways themselves. Posterganda, big as day, displayed their thoughts to the entire spaceport:

A GENUINE WOMAN BREEDS SOCIETY'S NEEDS—

NOT HER WANTS

A solid holo of a zygot-to-fetus-to-human rotated beneath it, making it clear the object of their derision. The babe rested within a holographic woman with a question mark for a head.

She ignored the haters, and waddled on home.

BIRTHDAY!

Sweat poured out of her like a waterfall. Doctor Anuba, in the full body sky blue gel garb that screamed physician, played it cool.

"You wanted natural breeching, so breathe, and...push."

Sharqueen gave it her all. Hot Ark, this Boy must have Michael's big, anvil head! Her genitalia was at the breaking point, literally, as the pushing Anuba called for got to be unbearable.

On the ninth (tenth?) push she quit and slammed her groaning back against the plush bed foam, convinced a firm hand would be needed to pull young, (what would they name him? Only now thinking about it!) out of her. But that one, as the raw tearing subsided, brought the quiet.

Tap out.

A genteel version of a cry wafted on the stillness to hum as melody to Sharqueen's tympanum.

A smile creased her weary face, peace to closed eyes. "That him?"

"Yes," Anuba replied, "healthy and lively and...wrinkly. The natural version sure is, slippery." He moved fast to clean the Boy, swaddle him in cloth, and place him in Mother's arm.

Half of Mother leaned on slumber. The other half looked at this child through half cut eyes, "Baby, you got free range to kick all you want now."

"He is precious, if not a bit weird for being outside of a gel dome at this stage. But still, cute little guy." The nurse wiping Sharqueen's brow definitely had opinions.

"He's perfect."

The nurse smiled. "I felt the same when I did my duty once. Made a playland for tots on Alpha Two. A small contribution, but a good one. Maybe try that next?"

Sharqueen tried to look at her, even as her brain sent word to pass out. "A playland won't hug you back, never will tell you it loves you or...talk to you about life."

Nurse shrugged, uncomfortable in the talk. "Yes, well, have you a name for your spawn?" She flicked a hand to produce a polyhedral white screen to document the details.

Sharqueen studied the Boy's teensy face, its restive features, peace in her hands. "Choice. His name is Choice Lamotte, middle names TBD later. His father can award him those."

A wisp of a smile, and the nurse jotted the data, and then took Choice to the ICU while Mother dozed off.

She awoke hours later. At her bedside, a wreath of magenta Venusian lilies adorned the nightstand. The card on it read:

YOU MADE YOUR STATEMENT AND YOU ARE NOW ONE OF US

Well I'll be.

Six years. Four months. Seven days.

Centaur, like most dwarves in Kuiper, keeps up the tradition of the fashion walks. Pregnant Mothers make their Statements along an illuminated beam of solid vermillion hololight, teaching the solar system how to dress, how to walk, how to support far off colonies. Be bold, shun insecurity, dress like sunlight, choose community over self. This year, Sharqueen and Michael graced the stage, a first for Centaur, and its stunned, enraptured audience. Things are changing.

Sharqueen accented her dark skin in a velvety black and tangerine open blouse, only the breasts covered, strands of material blowing in the Centaurian breeze. She sported seven-inch malleable orange platform heels, platinum bracelets running all the way up both arms to the shoulders, flared chimera slacks. Her head was shaved down to the scalp, with the back of the head full of expansive African curls. She dyed her eyes and lips sea green for the occasion.

She rocked the Ark all the way back to Earth, scandal becoming badge of honor. Near legend.

Michael wore a simple black tuxedo, no tie, and a pair of metallic black boots. He knew the Statement was a celebration of womanhood, and sought to blend into the background.

But Choice Mandela Anuba Lamotte, star of the show, oddity of the land, wee piece of history, wore a posterganda one piece in teal. MY MOMMY MADE THIS.

It kicked off a movement.

Just about every dwarf in Kuiper has a pregnant mother now. Swollen ankles. Whispering stories. Worrying about the baby human inside of them.

Sharqueen and Michael think Choice needs a sister.

Change the trend.